Sabine came to mass public attention driving one of the two BMW M5 "Ring taxi" around the 20.8km long race track in an entertaining manner.

According to her own estimates, Sabine has gone around the track 20,000 times, increasing by approximately 1200 per year. Her familiarity with the circuit earned her the nicknames "Queen of the Nürburgring" and "the fastest taxi driver in the world". She says her favourite parts of the track are Schwedenkreuz and Fuchsrohre.

Claudia Hürtgen is her main rival, winning the championship in 2006, and scoring pole and victory in the third VLN race of 2008, with a BMW Z4.

In December 2004, Schmitz gained recognition in the United Kingdom after appearing in the BBC television show Top Gear with presenter Jeremy Clarkson. On her only attempt, using the same car, she beat his best lap time of 9 minutes 59 seconds in a Jaguar S-Type diesel by 47 seconds (Season 5, Episode 5), having castigated his best lap with the comment "I tell you something, I do that lap time in a van".

Thus, in her second appearance on Top Gear, she actually drove a Ford Transit van in an attempt to beat Clarkson's time set in the Jaguar S-Type diesel. Her final time with a stripped (hub caps, spare tyre and toolkit removed and a Dodge Viper driving in front to help slipstream or draft the aerodynamically challenged van) Transit van was 10 minutes and 8 seconds (Season 6, Episode 7). When trying to film Schmitz, the team couldn't keep up so they used Jaguar test driver Wolfgang Schubauer to drive the Jaguar S-Type R chase car.

Her third appearance was at the 2005 Top Gear Awards to collect the award for 'Best German' (Season 7, Episode 6).

In 2007, she appeared in Clarkson's Supercar Showdown DVD where she raced an Audi R8 against The Stig in a Porsche 911 GT3.

She also appeared in the sixth episode of the 11th series of Top Gear, in a competition between the German show she appears on with the British Top Gear. In the double decker car race she beat Jeremy Clarkson and his co-driver, a one armed sound recordist.

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